


an agitation of the hands

by satellites (brella)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, TOW Lydia Martin slays Peter Hale and is surprised by how much it freaks her out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:30:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's gone over it about a hundred different ways in her head. How she'd theoretically kill Peter Hale, she means.</p>
            </blockquote>





	an agitation of the hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [usoverlooked](https://archiveofourown.org/users/usoverlooked/gifts).



> Happy holidays, Libby! I hope you like your present!! Please read [lady lazarus](http://allpoetry.com/poem/8498497-Lady-Lazarus-by-Sylvia_Plath) by Sylvia Plath (but you probably already have, you classy gal). You should also probably be thanking my boyfriend and Izzy and Katelyn, who all helped me plot out how this would theoretically go over. I don’t feel like I quite nailed it, but I’ve worked this over so long that I wouldn’t even be able to tell if I had, haha. I LOVE YOU A LOT! I’M SO HAPPY I GOT YOU AS AN ASSIGNMENT!

_dying is an art, like everything else_

It doesn’t start or end with the blood, but the blood is there, running red through every line of her quavering palms, sticky and stenched with inescapable certainty, coating her wrists and caked under her fingernails, and the blood doesn’t go away.

The blood never will.

She grips her hair, writhes, dry heaves, and starts to scream. Crimson smears over her scalp. Arms encircle her, and still she screams, the loudest and rawest that she ever has. The Banshee does not herald only death, not tonight, but the death that is still slick and fresh between her fingers.

She is carried, thrashing and bloodied and still ululating, out of the forest, and all of the birds of the black branches overhead scatter chaotically into the moonlight.

* * *

But that is Sunday. Today is the Monday before, and the sun is out, and Scott McCall hears something.

His eyes flare scarlet and he stops dead in his tracks in the hallway, and Stiles, his fevered gesticulations following the diatribe he’s currently in the middle of recounting, continues ahead for about five steps before he realizes that his audience is behind him.

He halts, pivoting around on one foot with his hands still poised in the air, and fixes Scott with a prying frown.

“Scott,” he says, and nothing else, but his tone carries all of the questions it needs to.   

“I dunno,” Scott answers him quietly. His eyes are on the floor and his brow is furrowed. He curls his hands into fists. “I – I heard something.”

Stiles squints at him.

“Are we talkin’, like, ‘disturbance-in-the-force’ something, or ‘Coach-watching-porn-in-the-teacher’s-lounge’ something?” he demands, throwing his hands in the air. “I mean, could I get a little specificity here? Like, are we gonna die in the next five minutes, or—?”

“I don’t know,” Scott repeats. He shakes his head and winces as though fighting off a headache. “It’s probably nothing.”

There is a flicker of uncertainty in his tone that reveals exactly how opposite of nothing he believes it to be, and his eyebrows continue to twitch closer. It has been a month since the dispersion of the Alpha Pack, since Sheriff Stilinski had found Jennifer Blake’s mangled body in the woods, since Derek and Cora had vanished into the dark corners of the foggy nighttime.

Stiles sighs through his nose and strides back to him, slinging his arm around his shoulders.

“Yeah, probably,” he agrees, nodding with theatrical sagacity. “Just like, I don’t know, _Pearl Harbor_ was nothing.”

Scott scowls at him and Stiles shrugs innocently, raising his hands in surrender.

“I’m just saying, dude, if you’re gonna lie to me, I’d appreciate it if you’d at least put in a little effort,” he says.

Scott shoves him lightly in the shoulder and walks on, slipping his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. Stiles jogs to catch up to him, his lacrosse stick thudding against his back, and falls into step beside him, staring pointedly at him. As they round the corner to their lockers, Scott grimaces and drops his head back and sighs, and Stiles grins, knowing he’s won.

“I thought I heard a howl,” Scott murmurs.

“What, like Derek?” Stiles suggests, and then he rolls his eyes. “Jesus, does that guy even know what a vacation is?”

“It wasn’t Derek,” Scott interjects. His gaze is still focused on the floor, on the perfectly synced rhythm of his and Stiles’s feet as they walk. “It sounded like Peter.”

“Oh, good, that’s much better,” Stiles deadpans, flinging out an exasperated arm. “Since Peter definitely wins Lycanthropic Pal of the Year Award. What, is he lonely?”

When Scott doesn’t answer, Stiles glances over, all traces of facetiousness eradicated. Scott swallows, sighs shakily out, and comes slowly to a halt in front of his locker.

“No,” he finally answers in a low and disquieted voice. His eyes meet Stiles’s and are unsure. “I think… I think he’s angry.”

* * *

Allison, per the norm, does not let Scott’s minute change in mood for the rest of the day go unnoticed.

Lydia is so over it. She’s been doing all of the work in their Physics lab herself because Allison won’t stop staring over at Scott and Stiles’s table with a pinched look on her face. Way to pull your weight, best friend. It’s not like Lydia _needs_ weight to be pulled, or anything – let’s be real here – but it’s the principle of the thing.

“Allison, I think we can safely say at this point that he’s not going to spontaneously combust if you look at him long enough,” she drawls, doodling a tulip in the margins of her scratch paper. “So I’d appreciate at _least_ some moral support on this thing, God forbid you actually _help_.”

Allison doesn’t jump – the day anyone actually manages to take her off-guard will be one for the history books – but her head jerks slightly in acknowledgement and, after a few more seconds of fixated focus, she exhales through her nose and pries her attention away from Scott.

“God forbid you actually _need_ it,” she retorts with a smirk. Lydia practically starts preening right there. “Is it just me, or is he acting weird? It’s not just me. Right?”

“I’m sorry, are you asking for my opinion or just spouting off rhetoric?” Lydia asks, all tartly. Allison rolls her eyes. “Well, whether you’re _asking_ or not: No, it’s not just you. The freak has always been strong in that one, but he’s _especially_ cagey today.” She shrugs. “Full moon, maybe?”

“It’s not for another seventeen days,” Allison mutters, and Lydia snorts, because _of course_ she keeps track. “Maybe we should ask him what’s up.”

Lydia makes an extra-big show of rolling her eyes.

“And by ‘maybe’ you mean ‘definitely,’” she half-sings, and she knows she’s right. “Allison, please. We’re going off the assumption that something’s up at _all_ and he’s not just trying to hide one of those anomaly boners that guys get, and I don’t think you’re being _literal_ with this question, so—”

Allison breaks her off with a disbelieving chuckle.

“You’re hopeless,” she comments, shaking her head, but the exasperated quirk in the corners of her lips is undeniably amused. “I’m just… I want to make sure everything’s okay. That’s not that crazy, is it?”

“Not really.” Lydia sighs, scribbling a formula into her notes off the top of her head. “Especially since that creepy veterinarian seems to think this place could turn into the next Hellmouth at any given second.”

“Hellmouth, huh?” Allison drawls, and when Lydia darts her eyes up to narrow them, it does nothing to wipe the simper off of her face. “I thought you had, hm, what was it… a severe allergy to gratuitous pop culture references?”  

“Nothing gratuitous about it,” Lydia snips, returning to her work with a haughty toss of her hair. “You’re the more well-acquainted with the Buffyverse between the two of us, anyway, what with your questionable extracurricular activities and your profound emotional issues.”

“Thanks, Lydia,” Allison says flatly, and Lydia beams at her with all of her teeth.

* * *

_it was an accident_

Lydia's calf muscles feel as though they are being twisted into nothing when she finally stumbles to a halt beside Allison. The forest smells fresh and alive and rain-coated all around her, and her breath streams out in a silver cloud that vanishes slowly into the dark like smoke.

"Do you hear that?" she whispers, her voice frail from windedness, and it's a stupid question, because the violent sounds beating against the walls of the distillery are tearing the foggy skies apart – snarls, screams, the tearing of metal and skin, the clash of claws, the arrhythmic beating of bodies against the earth, the chilling crunch of bones – are so audible that they may as well be solid.

Allison is already nocking an arrow in her compound bow. “We have to go in. Do you have it?”

Lydia pulls the taser out of her purse and holds it up for Allison to see.

“Please,” she replies, trying and failing at sounding light. “I’m not _that_ bad. But you should know that I had to take out my hair dryer to fit this.”

Allison strides past her, bow at the ready. “Stay behind me. Don’t come in until I say so.”

Lydia follows close behind, her fist closing around the cool plastic surface of the taser, and braces her feet apart when Allison kicks open the door.

* * *

_what a million filaments_

Scott, as he, in turn, is wont to do whenever anyone picks up on his critical deficiency in subtlety, looks utterly gobsmacked when Allison and Lydia corner him outside the locker room after lacrosse practice.

“What’s going on, Scott?” Allison asks bluntly, and, well, okay, that was quick.

Scott’s eyes bug out.

“Uh…” he flummoxes, followed by a paralyzed silence that lasts about six seconds too long. “Nothing. Nothing? Nothing!”

“You know, it is _mind-boggling_ to me that you’ve managed to keep the furry little problem mum this long,” Lydia sighs bracingly, “Because you might be the worst liar I’ve ever met.”

“He’s not a bad liar,” Allison counters, and simpers at Scott until he fidgets. “He’s just bad at lying to _me_.”

“I…” Scott considers this, glancing ceilingward as though rifling through whatever inevitably disorganized filing system he has in his head. “That’s… probably true.” He sobers, after a second, with a shake of his head. “But… listen, I’m not bringing either of you into this; you’ve been in enough danger because of me.”

When Allison’s eyes narrow into dangerous slits, Lydia speaks up for her.

“Scott?” she chirps, and when he stands at attention, she purses her lips. “You _do_ realize who you’re talking to, right?” She points illustratively to Allison, roving her hand up and down. “Danger? _Probably_ the only thing with an _actual_ chance of stealing whatever ridiculously huge fraction of Allison’s heart belongs to _your_ sorry ass.”

“ _Lydia_ ,” Allison hisses.

“I…” Scott flushes red and Allison’s head whips around to glare affrontedly at Lydia. “That was… creative, Lydia.”

“Just tell us, Scott.” Allison’s voice is soft, but commanding and stern, more a silver bullet than any mythos surrounding her surname. She gives up on frowning in Lydia’s direction and slackens her uptight shoulders, turning back to Scott with calm eyes. “I know you’re trying to be all heroic here, but I can think of about three different examples of why it’s better when you keep us informed. And _not_ just because we’re assets to the pack.”  

“Hmm, yeah,” Lydia agrees breezily. “Like, remember that time Derek Hale’s repulsive parasite of an uncle used my body as a vessel to do his bidding? Remember all of the _work_ I had to do to convince this stupid town that I wasn’t a _quack_ and oh, hey, remember how much _therapy_ I’ve had to pay for? Or what about that time my ex-boyfriend turned into a lizard monster and killed nine people, _not_ including himself, temporarily, because you people couldn’t distinguish the archaic Latin word for master? Because I do.” She smiles. “ _Quite_ well, actually.”

Scott had begun to look increasingly pained with each word that came out of her mouth, and now the grimace on his face is pulled taut to the point that he looks like he could legitimately be in physical agony. And okay, as much as Lydia loves Scott and understands his deeply sutured qualities of golden retriever-like loyalty and altruism, he definitely deserved that. Intent as the Great Brooder Derek Hale and his slime-for-molecules uncle seem to be on letting slide any past transgressions against Lydia and her psyche and well-being and happiness and sense of self, she is _past_ taking this all lying down.

Where’s Stiles when you need him? Not that she’s, you know, _talked_ to him about it, or anything, but he’s always seemed to intuitively know when she needs space or answers (and has chosen to withhold them both, but whatever; it’s _something_ ), so he’d be a valuable boon right about now – not that Lydia and Allison can’t break Scott down on their own, because they definitely _can_ ; Lydia just prefers having… extra entertainment. And/or prey.

She rises back out of her introspection to see Scott and Allison exchanging silent, meaningful looks, and only when Scott’s eyes dart furtively over to her does she understand what’s going on.

“No,” she says immediately, stepping forward, and the sound of it is thunderous thanks to her high heels. “ _No_ , you are _not_ leaving me out of this; I am _not_ going to be the only one here without a goddamn _clue_ of what’s going on. _Again_.” Insistently, and breaking the sniping façade, she protests, “I can _help_!”

“She can, Scott,” Allison murmurs.

“I don’t need you to _vouch_ for me, Allison,” Lydia snaps, but then she loosens. “But thank you.”

“It’s not that I don’t think you can help, Lydia; it’s just that I don’t think…” Scott exhales heavily, scratching the crown of his head and glancing at his feet. “I don’t think this is… you know, that you should – it might—”

It clicks in Lydia’s head, then, right away. Scott is unsurprisingly easy to read.

“It’s Peter,” she breathes. “Isn’t it?”

Scott, rather than answering, flounders for a moment before closing his mouth and bowing his head, eyebrows knotting together. Lydia ignores the sour feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“I am _not_ afraid of him,” she snarls, much more adamantly than she had expected. Even Allison is taken aback by the vehemence, judging by her slightly wider eyes.

Scott, though, doesn’t seem thrown by her outburst. In fact, he looks almost apologetic. Rueful, a little. Like she’d just turned into something he sincerely wished she didn’t have to. She knows the feeling. The expression fades, though, blotted out by resignation.

“Yeah,” he rasps, scrubbing a hand over his inclined face. “Yeah, it’s Peter; I don’t know what specifically, not yet, but Stiles hacked the police station’s network and read the M.E.’s report for Jennifer, and it looks like her throat was slashed by claws…”

“How do you know it’s Peter?” Allison interjects, frowning. “I mean, he’s not _exactly_ the only one with claws in this town.”

“I think that this… True Alpha thing kinda heightens my connection to other werewolves, you know?” Scott answers, clearly struggling to explain. “Like, there’s this big network in my chest now, and every time another werewolf feels something really strong… or _wants_ something… I can sense it.”

“And what does Peter want?” Allison prompts him.

“To drop dead, I hope,” Lydia says sweetly.

“Power,” Scott says. “He’s always wanted power.”

“Specifically…” Allison finishes for him, realization rising in her face. “Yours.”

After a beat of strained silence, during which Scott locks eyes with her and exhales quietly through his nose, he nods.

“So, what, he’s on the warpath now?” Lydia demands. She hadn’t even noticed that her hands are in fists. “Hm! I’m sure you’re very surprised about this turn of events, especially after he murdered six people and exerted unwanted mind control on involuntary third parties and _turned you into a werewolf in the first place_. Peter Hale, turning out to be the bad guy? _Shocker_.”

She’s never talked this much, actually, about how much Peter Hale repulses her. And it hasn’t been like she can discuss it with a counselor, or anything; even though Morrell has her finger on the pulse, supernatural freakshow-wise, she is _not_ the right audience to which the story ought to be vented. Lydia had been perfectly fine with her curdling contempt and her cold bitterness and had put it behind her with the aid of a roll of toilet paper from Stiles Stilinski’s bedroom and a few well-placed and eager penises. Really, she had been. Until that door to Derek’s little warehouse lair had slid aside, and the only reaction she’d gotten out of Peter had been a cheeky, “Me.”

Scott doesn’t offer up a word of rebuttal, either; he just stands with slackened shoulders and stares at the ground and Lydia doesn’t know if that’s better or worse.

“What does Isaac think?” Allison finally asks, her voice quiet.

Scott shrugs, toeing at nothing on the floor.

“He says that whatever I wanna do, he’ll do with me,” he replies. “He’s freaked out, though. I can tell.”

“So, what, Peter wants to try to steal this True Alpha thing from you?” Allison’s brow is furrowed with thought. “Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?”

“You’d think,” Scott mumbles.

“He can’t still be wanting in on the whole pack thing, right?” Lydia inquires. “I mean, he’s only a Beta now; he can’t go around barking orders at a bunch of other werewolves and expect them to listen.”

Barking orders. If Stiles was here, he’d probably snigger. Where _is_ he?

“Where’s Stiles?” Oh, okay. She actually hadn’t had any intention of voicing this question, but there we go.

Scott blinks at her a few times, like he’s genuinely surprised she cares.

“He, uh…” He clears his throat. “He’s in the computer lab, still reading the file on Jennifer. With Danny.”

Lydia pauses for a second to let that statement settle, and when Scott doesn’t elaborate, Allison swoops in to demand the obvious.

“With _Danny_?” she repeats incredulously.

Scott smiles just slightly, crooked and mischievous.

“Yeah, didn’t… he didn’t tell you guys?” The smile widens. “Danny knows.”

Allison and Lydia both stiffen in unison.

“ _What_?!” they burst out. Scott has to cover his sensitive werewolf ears against the echo.

“Well, Stiles and I were talking to him, and Stiles said he might need some help getting into the police’s computer system since they’ve got some new security,” he explains, clearly loving every minute of it, “And he was like, ‘Do you need this for werewolf stuff?’ And Stiles almost had a freakin’ heart attack, and then Danny said, ‘What? I know what keeping a secret looks like; trust me. And Jackson told me.’”

“ _Jackson_?” Lydia snaps. Months have gone by and she _still_ doesn’t like the sound of the name.

“Skype is a thing that exists, apparently,” Scott says, shrugging in a helpless kind of way. “I don’t think he knows that Ethan’s a werewolf, though. But, yeah, looks like Jackson took the liberty of updating him on the fact that me and Isaac are—”

“Isaac and I,” Lydia corrects him automatically.

“Uh-huh. That.”

Allison shakes her head and puts her hands up as if to bat away any distractions, her jaw clenching firmly. There’s a tiny crinkle between her eyebrows that only shows up when she’s especially disquieted.

“Scott, if Peter’s coming after you, then you’re going to need all the help you can get, especially now that Derek and Cora aren’t around,” she tells Scott with insistent but somehow still beseeching eyes. “I know he’s only a Beta now, but he wouldn’t be trying this in the first place if he wasn’t sure it would _work_ ; he’s too smart for that. Stealing status from a True Alpha might not make _him_ a True Alpha, but I have a feeling it’d still pack a punch.”

“How _do_ you steal Alpha power, anyway?” Lydia asks airily. “No one ever got around to mentioning that tidbit to me. Much like many other tidbits, but we'll let that slide.”

Scott and Allison glance at her, then at each other, then back to her, uncomfortably. She raises her eyebrows.

“You…” Scott gulps. “He’d have to kill me.”

Figures.

“Well, then!” Lydia chirps, straightening and tossing a cascade of russet over her shoulder. “Now that we know _that_ , there’s no _way_ we’re letting you take the Lone Wolf route on this one.” She is _full_ of these today. “We’re helping you, Scott. Whether you like it or not. So you can either tell us how, or we can figure it out for ourselves.”  

Scott’s face seems to be wrestling with itself. Lydia can tell, though, that his resistance is starting to recede, though she’s pretty sure that has more to do with Allison’s steely and unwavering gaze than anything else.

When he opens his mouth again, she only half-listens.

* * *

_to last it out and not come back at all_

“How do you know he was lying?” she demands of a frantically focused Allison, her hands clenched in fists at her sides. “Allison! Answer me!”

Allison doesn’t still, but her nostrils flare with release as she tugs her compound bow out from under the bed.

“He has a tell,” she replies. She slings her quiver over her shoulder in a practiced motion before moving to tie her hair up, and Lydia hasn’t seen her like this in what feels like the longest time. “That thing he fed us about Peter not coming yet was just to throw us off.” Bitterly, she adds, “Because, _once again_ , he doesn’t want us to get _hurt_.”

“Okay, not that I’m not _equally_ pissed off by all of this as you are, but you _do_ realize that he’s not trying to keep you out of this because he doesn’t think you can _handle_ yourself, right?” Lydia asks. Her arms fold at her chest (her thudding, raging chest). “You have really got to get over this whole prove-yourself complex.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Allison mutters in a tone that very clearly reveals how much it does. “How’s your electrical engineering?”

“Proficient,” Lydia touts.

“Good.” Allison hefts one of her father’s taser batons out of the closet and thrusts it into Lydia’s startled hands. “How much more power do you think you can tweak that to have in half an hour?”

Lydia makes a show of tapping her chin with one finger, and only when Allison repeats her name with tightness does she finish up. Her hands go to her hips and she shrugs.

“In layman’s terms?” she says. “Lots more. Give me a table to work on and I’ll see what I can do.”

Twenty-six minutes later, she closes up the panel over the wiring and passes the weapon over to Allison’s pacing form.

“Done,” she announces. Allison, however, doesn’t take it.

“Keep that,” she orders, picking her bow back up off the foot of the bed. “You’re going to need it.”

Lydia gives the object in her hands an analytical once-over, turning it carefully between her fingers. She’s never seen it actually used on a werewolf, but she’s heard tell from Scott and Isaac that the sensation it creates for those of the furry persuasion is not exactly pretty. Powerlessness, paralysis, pain.

Three words she’s been _very_ familiar with for a while now.

“Let’s go,” Allison says, and Lydia picks up her car keys and pins up her hair and shoulders on the black peacoat with the high collar that Allison had loaned her, and she doesn’t close Allison’s bedroom door behind her.

* * *

  
_for the eyeing of my scars, there is a_   _charge_

She's gone over it about a hundred different ways in her head. How she'd theoretically kill Peter Hale, she means.

You’d think that this kind of extensive and, if she does say so herself, creative and versatile visualization would give her solid preparation for when she actually _does_ do it. Kill Peter Hale, that is. You know? You’d think it would _jade_ her to the whole thing. But it doesn’t.

God. It really doesn’t.

* * *

_i do it so it feels like hell. i do it so it feels real._

“ _Scott_!” Allison’s voice is sharp and rougher than it should be, breaking the air in the distillery apart. Her bow is pulled back and the arrow nocked in it is pressing into her cheek, cutting a line across the plane of her ferally gritted teeth.

Peter has him by the throat. Isaac is limp on the floor a few feet away, the left side of his face slashed open but slowly healing. Bile rises in Lydia’s throat seeing the burning yellow glisten when Peter turns his head to the source of the interruption, and all but reaches her tongue when his lips curl upwards in a wicked smile.

“Don’t you know better than to bring a lady to something like this, Scott?” he chides, and when he tightens his grip on Scott’s throat, a horrendous choking noise fills the empty roof space and makes Allison pull the arrow back even further. “Argent. You’ve… filled out.”

Allison lets the arrow fly. With incredible speed, Peter darts out of the way and holds Scott up in front of him, and the arrow catches Scott right in the stomach, wrenching a garbled cry out of him.

“I see your aim still hasn’t, however,” Peter sneers.

He flings Scott aside as though unloading a bag of flour, and Scott crashes into a crate and then to the ground with several more shouts of agony. Lydia knows he’ll heal, but the noises are scraping at her eardrums.

“I suppose it’s convenient that you’re all here,” Peter continues, examining his claws. “Deucalion _did_ manage to stumble onto something worthwhile. An Alpha’s power is always more visceral when he has no pack ties. More easily siphoned away. I _could_ start with Lahey, but I like to save the more interesting prey for last, so who would be the most… _undemanding_ here? Well, that’s easy. Where did I put our incomparable Stiles…?”

Lydia’s eyes land on the bloodied plaid before Peter has even begun to turn around. Stiles is panting on the dirt floor, fingers gripping a wound in his shoulder, crawling slowly but steadily toward Scott until Peter takes three steps forward and lands a single boot on Stiles’s outstretched hand.

Scott’s out of it. Isaac isn’t even moving, even though he’s still breathing. Allison’s fingers have not yet found another arrow. And Lydia suddenly has a flash against the backs of her eyes of Peter prying open Stiles’s white throat and puncturing holes between his complicated bones, and it’s followed by a thunderclap in her ear of: _I’m so sorry, Lydia. All of this must be terribly confusing but at least you know you’re not actually crazy._

She’s never run so fast, with such steady and unstoppable aim. Even in her high heels, she sprints like a wildcat, and Peter doesn’t even see her coming from behind, and by the time he’s whirled around at the sound of her approaching footfalls, the baton in her sweating hand is already extended and buzzing with life, and as he faces her, openly, unsuspectingly, she stabs the tip of it straight into his side.

It’s enough to jolt his werewolf form completely out of him in violent seconds. And she could stop there. She could.  

“You,” Peter wheezes out when he finally seems to register whose hand is twisting the prongs of the baton into him. With a jerking hand, he grips her elbow until it hurts, and then he _smiles_ , swaying, chuckling at her with something she recognizes, with a lurch of potent nausea, is _pride_.

Her hand shakes furiously around the handle of the baton and she does not pull it out. She can hear Stiles, far away, telling her she can stop now, but she does not heed him. Her mind is shrouded in frosted lacrosse fields, burned-out houses, an insidious and oily voice propelling her unwilling and terrified body further and further into nightmares.

Something rears its head back in her, then – something visceral and vengeful and blind. Tears streak her face and she bares her teeth like an animal, and, with a great wrench, she frees her arm from his crushing grasp. Strength spikes through her at a level she has never thought possible and she sinks the prongs of the baton as far in as they will go, relishing Peter’s strangled cry of pain. Her vision pulses with static, white at the edges.

“Me,” she confirms, in a low and feral snarl, and then, in the span of a single second, her thumb finds the voltage switch and shoves it all the way up.

Peter’s broad body spasms once, twice. Blood spurts from his nose and ears. His eyes do not leave hers. And then he falls, lands on his back with a single and final _thump_ that shakes the trees. He does not move.

“Lydia…” Stiles rasps, a hundred years away. “Lydia—”

Lydia stands, shivering, her knuckles white as she clenches the taser. She stares with bulging eyes at Peter’s still form, her teeth chattering, her breath coming in and out slowly but shakily.

Peter had bled on her. She can feel it, warm and slippery, on her hands. She watches, paralyzed, as Allison slips into her line of sight and kneels in the mulch beside Peter. Calmly, she presses her fingers to his pulse. Lydia waits.

After what seems like a dozen decades compressed into a moment, Allison withdraws. Her eyes wander, galvanized, to a point outside of Lydia’s peripheral that assumedly belongs to Scott.

“He’s dead,” she says in a voice lighter than air, and then she doesn’t seem to be looking at anything.

“Lydia—” Stiles whimpers again.

Lydia drops the taser. Her hands smash together and wring violently, and she starts trembling with increased intensity.

“I-I-I h-had to; I had to,” she murmurs, stammering. She feels like she could snap her own wrist. “He was going t-to – he w-wanted to—”

And then she screams.

She’s not sure whose arms fumble around her from behind, whose chest she finds herself wailing into with her fingers fisting into and pulling hard at her own hair. Probably Stiles’. She hears Scott’s voice, a funeral bell striking far away, repeating, “Let go of her; we have to go. Let go of her; we have to go.”

She’s fairly sure it’s Scott who carries her writing, crying body over the forest floor with heavy steps. Someone’s hand is gripping hers. Her throat is burning raw.

She loses track of things between this and waking up in Allison’s bed. Her voice is shot and her chest is hollow like a hole in an oak and when she comes to, she can make no sound at all.

* * *

_and like the cat i have nine times to die_

Stiles has a panic attack on Tuesday. That’s what Allison tells her, anyway; Lydia stays home that day with her sore throat and her sunken eyes.

“Is he okay?” she demands at the webcam, hating how much she actually cares.

Allison glances aside. Her face is disconcertingly pale and bluish in the glow from her laptop screen. She shrugs.

“As okay as he can be, I guess,” she mutters.

Lydia narrows her eyes.

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” she snips.

Allison shakes her head. She looks exhausted, straggly dark hairs and thick circles under her amber eyes.

“Scott thinks it’s what Deaton was talking about,” she says in a hushed voice. “Makes sense, since he hasn’t really been—”

“Consulting his emotional tether?” Lydia finishes for her, but it comes out much croakier than she’d wanted or expected. “Or are you trying to go the vice-versa route?”

“Lydia…” Allison starts to say gently, sounding altogether more like a scolding older sister.

“If he needs me, he can ask,” Lydia interrupts. “I am _not_ going to waste my time coyly dancing around the subject; I refuse to give boys the satisfaction. Anyway, how do you even know he’s in crisis? Maybe he needs to go this alone.”

“No one should go anything alone,” Allison tells her fiercely.

Lydia loosens a little.

“What about you?” Allison asks after a while.

“What _about_ me?” Lydia bandies back, even though she knows.

“Lydia,” Allison repeats in the same nudging tone. Her smile is crooked, but fond.

Lydia tacks on her most aloof visage and bounces a shrug.

“I’m peachy.”

Allison gives her a critical look and Lydia endeavors to appear both innocent and infallible at the same time. Allison isn’t buying it, unfortunately; she never does.

“Lydia, you killed somebody,” she whispers.

Lydia, in a moment of weakness, winces.

“Somebody who _deserved_ it,” she mumbles, picking at her pajama pants.

“Well,” Allison says hesitantly, “ _Yeah_ , but…”

“Think of it this way,” Lydia chirps as blithely as she can. “He cheated the first time. Death-wise. We’re— _I’m_ just making sure he follows the rules.”

She’s a little bummed, on some level. His pelt probably would’ve made an awesome fur vest, but Derek had insisted on _burying_ him.

It’s kind of a sick thought to have. She’s considered it in a poetic irony kind of way – her turning Peter’s furry scumbag self into a fashion accessory, that is – but it feels pretty terrible to be thinking about it now that she’s actually _dead_. Not that she’s _unhappy_ about it, mind you; she’s pretty thrilled, in retrospect, discounting the inevitable years of approaching therapy, but – well. She’s kind of in shock. She’s not an idiot; she’d known it was going to happen. It’s normal. You murder someone who fucked you up; you’re going to be a little hinky for a while.

That doesn’t make it any more _fun_ , or anything. Or any less emotionally ravaging. Whatever.

“Look, Lydia, I know you’re a lot less nonchalant than you’re trying to look like you are—”

“Allison, please. I’m radiating chalance from my pores,” Lydia retorts primly, twisting a lock of unbrushed hair around her finger illustratively, but Allison continues undaunted.

“And that’s fine; that’s just how you are,” she says, “But I’m here if you need to talk about it. So’s Scott.” With a tincture more emphasis, she adds, “So is Stiles.”

Lydia glances sulkily at the keyboard, her lips puckering into a magnificent pout. She has a distinct feeling that Allison’s totally unsubtle prod at the end there had had less to do with Lydia needing Stiles and more to do with the inverse.

Mutuality is not an option; don’t be absurd.

“Fine, noted.” Lydia huffs tightly, widening her eyes for emphasis at the camera. “But I swear. I’m a great coper. No unresolved teen angst garbage for _miles_.”

“Hm,” Allison grunts noncommittally. Her eyes check the upper corner of the frame, where Lydia presumes her clock it. “Damn it. It’s already midnight; I have to go to bed. See you tomorrow?”

“Only if you bring some better advice,” Allison sings, and Allison’s screen cuts to black.  

Lydia’s phone screen lights up silently with another new message. She doesn’t so much as glance fully over it, staring at her image in the webcam. Her eyes are sunken and her hair is straggling and she’s starting to seriously wonder if there’s some bestiary somewhere that she belongs in now, because she’s never looked more monstrous.

It is really _not_ a good look for her.

She doesn’t bother trying to sleep; she knows it’s pointless. She finds an online Pong emulator and plays it dazedly until she’s blinking the approaching dawn out of her swollen eyes. Her alarm clock starts trilling and she does nothing to placate it, sitting blankly with her socked feet tucked under her.

She scrubs a palm over her face before halting it at her hairline. She finally strays an unsteady hand to her phone and swipes a thumb across the screen to unlock it – seven unread texts. She almost doesn’t bother reading them. What _conceivable_ thing could anybody say to her that’ll be helpful at this point?

_from: SCOTT_

_text me when you’re awake and let me know how you are, ok? please_

_from: ISAAC_

_here if you need me_

_from: ALLISON_

_Lydia, if you don’t pick up your Skype right now, I’m shooting a smoke bomb arrow through your window. I’ll do it. I have the resources._

_from: SCOTT_

_stiles says hi. how are you doing?_

_from: SCOTT_

_lydia please don’t shut us out_

_from: STILES_

_don’t tell scott i said this but honestly, lydia, peter was a dick anyway_

_from: STILES_

_ok i’m legitimately starting to worry here. give me a sign youre alive lydia please. text me or send me a smoke signal or a telegram or some skywriting. and if not that then at least sleep well i guess, or don’t, whatever’s good for you_

_from: STILES_

_please_

Make that eight.

Lydia blows out a sigh, her thumbs (chilled) hovering over the touch-keyboard. The luminescent screen is making her vision twinge in the purplish dimness set by the feeble sun through her closed curtains.

She doesn’t have a single clue how to respond to any of those, to any of _anything_. Her hands are freezing. She’d forgotten to turn the floor heater on, and now she can’t feel her feet and she can’t thunder out words with shaking fingers because motion only makes them feel stiffer, creakier.

She waits for the phone screen to fade to black on its own. There are peculiar echoes in her ears, ones that sound nothing like the whispers of the dead or like her own unearthly shrieks. She’s not sure what they’re saying to her, only that they’re very convincing, very calm.

She doesn’t know what to do with the phone in her hands or the restless river of faces waiting beyond the white letters that make her thumbprints feel thick and clumsy. She doesn’t know what to do about the fact that her palms still sting, a little, from where she’d washed them red and raw the night before, digging her fingernails into the skin as if to scrape off some adhesive and invisible stain. She doesn’t know what to do about the fact that she still sees Peter’s charred red face on the backs of her eyelids when she slips into sleep without paying attention. And she hates not knowing what to do; always has.

So she slips her feet forward on the magenta carpet and braces her shaky hands on the base of the swivel chair and stands, and she does the one thing she _is_ pretty sure she knows how to handle.

She yanks the curtains open and stands only for a second in the harsh light that pours in. Her heels dig into the rug when she comes to a halt in front of the vanity her mother had gotten her for her fourteenth birthday, and she doesn’t give herself more than a few seconds to register how ashen and haggard she looks in the sunshine before she’s taken a seat and carefully brought her hairbrush to the first tress of strawberry blonde.

The knots and gnarls hurt like hell when she pries them out, but the way her hair twirls effortlessly past her shoulders when she’s finished is worth it, she guesses. She wings her eyeliner and curls on her mascara and efficiently dusts on her sandalwood-est eyeshadow and covers up the bags under her eyes, brings the volume back to her pretty cheeks, pinches color into them again. She paints her lips a searing red and doesn’t make a single mistake, and the bruise around her neck from Jennifer’s garotte is gone.

“Never frown, Lydia,” she whispers to her flawless reflection. She doesn’t find a smile waiting in her chest, so she settles for tilting her chin just the slightest angle more haughtily and giving shape to her eyebrows and smirking.

She’s not _hiding_ , or anything. She’s just… strategically erecting ramparts.

She feels much more set for the world, after that. She finally turns her alarm clock off with a prim tap of the heel of her palm, picks up her Chloé bag, and when she walks, she remembers to do it with poise.

* * *

_a sort of walking miracle, my skin_

She strides down the halls the way she hasn’t in a while: with a fiercely elevated head and a rapid unforgiving rhythm to her steps, with ignorant eyes and mildly annoyed dimples, with coldness cascading out of her by every immaculately curled fiery hair. And sure, she’d stopped walking this way for a _reason_ , but maybe old habits die hard in times of trauma, or maybe she just feels twice as empowered when she murders somebody _and_ wears her nicest pair of Betsey Johnsons.

It’s kind of short-lived, though. The viperous arrogance, that is, or at least, the viperous attempts to ward off any kind of emotional breakdowns in the classroom setting. This is because Stiles Stilinski does not know when to shut his running mouth and let sleeping dogs lie. Dogs. Wolves. Hm. At least her sense of humor isn’t a total wreck.

“Okay, Lydia,” he declares at lunch with adamancy that really doesn’t suit him, taking a seat directly next to her instead of across from her at her table. He looks terrible, ash-rimmed eyelids and hair mussed from lack of care rather than purposeful hands. “We need to talk.”

Lydia takes a pointed bite of her celery stick, brandishing it as she narrows her eyes at the ceiling instead of at him.

“About…?” she prompts him, instead of any option in the plethora of acerbic comebacks stewing on her tongue.

Stiles’s frustration has a way of rising into the air, until it’s tangible and unavoidable. She can feel it now, in fact, radiating thickly onto her skin from his wiry origin point. A body as gangly as his shouldn’t be able to house such force.

“About the fact that you’re not _talking_ ,” he expounds explosively. “To _any_ of us. Like you’re… I dunno, like you’re Old Lydia. The Lydia who pretended to, y’know, not have a soul and devoted all of her energy to tearing other people down with, like a single well-aimed look. And I’m no Morrell, or anything, but that sounds like a pretty messed-up coping mechanism, to be honest, so…”

“Who says I need to cope?” Lydia retorts, still not looking at him, teething primly on a baby carrot now. “Maybe this is just some… timely reinvention.”

“Yeah, but see, you’re _not_ reinventing; you’re _relapsing_ ,” he corrects her vehemently, his jaw working with passion around the words. “Come on, Lydia; this isn’t you.”

Something thunders its way up the veins of Lydia’s arms, then, coming to a pulsing head right at her suddenly spiteful heart. She slaps down her hands on the table.

“And what, pray _tell_ , do you claim to know about who I am, _Stiles_?” She finally whirls her head to face him, her simper sharp with disdain and rancor. “Other than the fact that I’m a pretty girl with a nice rack and a high IQ that you’ve been _lusting_ after for way longer than you should?”

She has to teach herself not to falter at the way his whole expression swiftly and irreparably cracks and then unravels, like she’s just pulled his still-beating heart out with her fingernails and spat on it. It disconcerts her, she realizes, seeing Stiles rendered speechless. The emptiness in the air only seems to bear down on her shoulders more heavily now that his rosy noise is not there to keep it alive. She tries to wash back the contrition starting to stir gravely in her abdomen, but she only gets so far before her instinctive teeth start to gnash out words that aren’t hers.

“Yeah,” she snips, as if she’s just won something. Her legs pry her up, up, until she’s standing over him and slinging her purse onto her shoulder. “That’s what I thought.”

She leaves him there, same as her tray of untouched food. She’s glad she didn’t graze fingers across Stiles by accident (even though she has no idea what insane context would demand that of her) because she’d found a fleck of dried blood under her pink manicured thumbnail during AP Lit today, and she’d had to scrape it out.

* * *

_to the same place, the same face_

She sees Scott and Allison as the day wears on, but neither of them approaches her, which she guesses she’s grateful for; Allison just shoots her a lot of urgent and meaningful looks and Lydia gives a noncommittal shrug when Scott mouths across the classroom during Physics lab, “ _Where’s Stiles?_ ”

Her cell lets out a tranquil _ping_ during the changing period before P.E. She halts her French braiding, hesitantly plucking the phone out from her purse and frowning uncertainly at the new message.

_from: STILES_

_things i 100% for sure know about lydia martin -- #1: gets cold easily but only ever wears jackets that match_

Lydia’s mind bites back, _Loses her shit and kills people_.

When she returns to the locker room after class is over, there are two more.

_from: STILES_

_#2 wears high heels because she’s actually really short and doesn’t want people to think they can talk down to her_

_from: STILES_

_#3 takes cream and sugar in her coffee but doesn’t want anyone to know about the sugar part because she has to keep up appearances, still likes hot chocolate the best. with marshmallows._

Lydia can’t control the aggressive dancing her thumbs do, can’t control the wavering of her vision.

_to: STILES_

_I don’t care._

_from: STILES_

_#4 acts like she doesn’t care, but always does; you just have to look for it. very, very, very hard. for about six years. but it’s there. lydia martin cares._

And how dare he, she thinks spitefully; how dare he be this good at reminding her that she’s still there, underneath the crusting stains and cold nights and smell of silent woods. How dare he look so hard.

She turns her phone off.

* * *

_they had to call and call_

_from: STILES_

_#5 likes touching people more than she lets on. kinda thrives on human contact, actually. and informative sites about serial killers, yes, i know she visits those._

_from: STILES_

_#6 favorite color is magenta, second favorite is powder blue, third favorite is vermillion_

_from: STILES_

_#7 isn’t scared of spiders but hates opossums_

_from: STILES_

_#8 doesn’t own a calculator_

_from: STILES_

_#9 sings showtunes in the shower, especially hello dolly_

_from: STILES_

_#10 lydia looks & laughter are earned not given. and i mean real looks, real laughter. because she has both of them. _

_from: STILES_

_#11 favorite book in fourth grade was frankenstein. nabokov’s the gift in eighth grade. in original russian. hates nietzsche. rereads war and peace every winter._

_from: STILES_

_#12 never wears the same outfit twice but has been using the same perfume since the seventh grade_

_from: STILES_

_#13 cries at the breakfast club (like a normal person should)_

_from: STILES_

_#14 unstoppable_

* * *

_i rocked shut as a seashell_

The next day passes. And the day after that. And, steadily, hazily, five more. Lydia doesn’t talk to Stiles for any of them, even though the messages in her inbox now number twenty-eight.

Look, she’s fine. She’s great. She clicks her heels on the hard hallway floors like she’s puncturing out a battle march, and she aces all of her tests that week without the slightest of hitch-ups. In fact, she does better than she normally does, in that she aces them in about ten minutes less time than it usually takes her.

Don’t worry. She knows that this is definitely an _issue_. As in, not healthy. As in, not _normal_. Allison and Scott have been weirdly inseparable since the whole Peter Incident, always exchanging conspiratorial glances and doing what definitely looks like holding hands under their desks. Lydia’s not about to call them out on it, because really, who didn’t see _that_ coming?

Isaac had gone out to look for Derek the night that it had happened, so Lydia hasn’t seen hide nor hair of him (God, she is on the _ball_ with these wolf puns), but Scott gets a text from him on Friday afternoon that he forwards to the rest of them saying that Isaac, Derek, and Cora will be back in town by the next morning.

_from: ISAAC (fw: SCOTT)_

_found derek & cora, 1 day outside of BH, derek not happy_

Derek not _happy_. Swell. Not that she’d, you know, expected anything else, because Peter _was_ Derek’s uncle, and everything, but, well, she’d always figured based on Derek’s constant abrasive bluntness toward the guy that their relationship had been, at best… strained? She doesn’t claim to have her finger on the pulse of werewolf familial values and behavior, but still.

Either way, maybe that sets off a wake-up call in the back of her head, knowing that pretty soon she’ll have to answer to the family she constantly forgets Peter had. Anything’s better than the nightmares, than Peter’s electrified corpse gripping her ankle and tearing her apart from the stomach out (but not before eviscerating Scott and ripping open Stiles’s throat and brutally dismantling Allison vertebrae-by-vertebrae).

Their last class of the day is P.E., and she sits out that day on account of the crippling menstrual cramps she doesn’t actually have, so when Scott comes out of the locker room talking in quiet tones with Danny, she’s waiting for him with her coat hanging between her hands and her braided hair wrapped around her head.

“Hi,” she says in her crispest but densest tone, flicking her eyes up hesitantly to meet his. Danny, without a second’s hesitation, backs away, but not before bracing a hand on her shoulder and giving her the smallest of smiles. She misses talking to Danny. It’s weird to see him existing outside of Jackson’s galaxy.

“Hi,” Scott replies immediately, his eyebrows furrowing down, but more with concern than confusion. “What’s up?”

“I need to talk,” she tells him. It takes her a second to dredge up the words, the admission, as simple as they are. “I… _really_ need to talk.”

He buys a pack of Reese’s from the gymnasium vending machine and lets her have them both, but then again, she doesn’t even think to offer the second one to him. They trudge out to the lacrosse field, which is empty and frosted over and brown, and he bunches up his jacket so that she can sit on it without getting her coat wet on the bleachers.

They sit like that, side by side, breath streaming languidly out of them in pale clouds, gazing out over the dead grass and the goal posts, for what feels to Lydia like hours. Winter is starting, somewhere under the cold-curled roots of the oak trees.

“Am I crazy?” she whispers in a voice far lighter and more breakable than she’d intended.

Scott’s hand immediately grips hers, careful but insistent. His outrageously-patterned burgundy wool gloves warm her fingers.

“I mean…” she continues when he says nothing, “I killed somebody. It doesn’t matter _who_ it was; that… that’s going to stay with me for the rest of my life. When I go to college, when I get married, when – _if_ I have kids. I’m never going to be able to… I’m never going to let myself live that down. I’ll never be able to forget. How can you even still _interact_ with me in good conscience? You and Allison and Stiles, you’ve… you’ve never _touched_ anybody. And I keep telling myself th-that I was only getting rid of the… _idea_ , you know, the _idea_ of Peter, but it – it was more than that. _God_. Who’s the monster now?”

_from: STILES_

_#26 lydia martin is going to save the world_

“Lydia,” Scott whispers, and it’s only when he reaches up to wipe her face clean that Lydia notices that she’s crying. “I’m not gonna say that it was okay, like, on the most basic moral level. But I… I really don’t blame you for it. I don’t know what I’m doing, like, ninety-five percent of the time, but I do know that at the end of the day, the one thing you don’t wanna be is alone. And you’re not alone, okay?” His voice plunges, then, into a low murmur that shakes just slightly at the edges with something that touches her chest when she recognizes it as protectiveness. “Yeah, he’s not gonna try to kill me, or anything, which is good, but… what’s important is that he is _never_ going to hurt you again. We were so stupid, not treating what happened like the big deal that it was – that it _is_ – and I just… I want you to know that I’m really sorry.”

“Why?” Lydia croaks, her glassy eyes unfaltering over the open field.

“Because you’re my friend,” Scott replies like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “And I care about you. You’re pack. It’s not just about sticking together; it’s about _belonging_ together, like family, but… deeper, kinda. I dunno how to explain it, but…” He curls his fingers more tightly around her hand. “Whatever weird start we got off to, you’re important to me now. Really important. So if you ever need to—”

She doesn’t give him the chance to finish. She turns her waist swiftly and flings her arms around his shoulders, yanking him into a hug and burrowing her face into his shoulder. He’s stiff for a second, but then he loosens and reciprocates, squeezing her just once, gently, barely noticeable, but it speaks more loudly and articulately than any of the words he’s been fumbling out since they sat down.

“Thanks, McCall,” she breathes. “You tell anyone you saw me crying, and I will _personally_ request that Allison stick an arrow up your furry ass, and she’d do it, because she loves me _way_ more than she loves you.”

She takes pride in the spluttering _that_ earns from him, but really, deeply, she thinks, God, Lydia Martin hadn’t really known what it felt like to be cared about until she met this boy and his ragtag pack of weirdos and misfits (and Stiles).

She could get used to it. She doesn’t even have a nightmare that night.

* * *

_o my enemy, do i terrify?_

"So you killed Uncle Peter, huh?" Cora drawls, polishing her claws on the surface of her jeans.

Lydia doesn't quite know how to respond to that. In all honesty, actually, now that you mention it, she doesn’t even know why she’s _here_. Derek had wanted to do some weird Derek Thing and _look the girl who murdered his uncle in the eye_ , or whatever, and so Lydia had answered Isaac’s hesitantly brusque text and strutted over to the warehouse after school got out, coming to a halt in the center of the concrete floor (still pockmarked with blood and broken glass), tactfully forgetting to mention to anyone where she was going.

Cora is seated on the spiral metal staircase leading to the upper catwalks, and Derek’s silhouette cuts up against the pale light coming in from the wide, grubby windows. Lydia’s sure that they can both hear her heartbeat, fatalistic and loud.

"Yes," she finally whispers back. It sounds weird every time she admits it out loud, because she doesn't really feel like she's killed a person, more like she's killed a nightmare, which is at least a lot more heroic. Still, though, even though she hadn’t seen Stiles at school for the fifth day in a row today, she can’t bring herself to worry, thanks to Scott McCall and his awkward but somehow still meaningful pep talks.

Cora, to Lydia's bewilderment, settles her face into a pleased smirk.

“Not bad,” she comments, sounding impressed.

“Shut up, Cora,” Derek murmurs coldly, not even flinching away from the warehouse window out of which he’s been staring for the past twenty minutes.

“Is there a particular reason you had me come out here?” Lydia finally demands, tart and cold. “Please tell me it’s not just to admire the view, because, while that’s understandable, I have more important things to be doing—”

“Tell me why,” Derek cuts her off, his voice gravelly. “Tell me why you killed him.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Lydia answers right away. “Because he invaded and controlled my body and clinically traumatized me for a year? Because he tried to _murder_ my _friends_? Or, I don’t know, maybe because he was, in general, a total _psychopath_? I’m really surprised you haven’t been getting these memos; they’re a _little_ imperative.”

“Surprised you’re not wearing his fur as a coat or something,” Cora comments, picking at her teeth with an extended claw. “Kinda seems up your alley.”

“And why would I want to flaunt the skin of the bastard who got under mine, hm?” Lydia bites back. Cora glances up, meeting her eye, and softens with comprehension.

“This isn’t a _game_!” Derek shouts suddenly, pounding a fist against the glass windowpane until it shatters. When he whirls on Lydia, his eyes are flaring yellow. Cora immediately stands, lingering hesitantly at Lydia’s shoulder, swaying to and fro on her heels. “You think you can just go around slaying werewolves whenever you feel like it, no consequences, no rules? Is that what you _think_ , Lydia, that just because you follow death wherever it goes, you can start _causing_ it?”

“Derek, back off,” Cora snarls – no, literally _snarls_ ; with sharp canines and glowing eyes and everything. “Uncle Peter was too far gone anyway; he didn’t care about us. He cared about power. Or did you miss the part where he tore Laura’s throat open?”

“It is taking _every_ bone in my body, you should know,” Lydia adds, her voice laced with venom, “Not to just… abandon logic and unleash a bunch of colorful curse words on you, _Derek_ , but what was that you just said? About there being no _consequences_? Let me _tell_ you about consequences; let me tell you about the _scars_ on my goddamn hands from how many times I’d break mirrors and tear things apart in my sleep. Let me tell you about the nightmares, or maybe the fact that wolfsbane makes me want to _vomit_ every time I see it. Let me tell you about how it _feels_ , Derek, having somebody’s blood all over your arms. Let me get started.”

“I know what that feels like,” Derek mutters, locking eyes with her, but his claws have begun to retract.

Lydia doesn’t give him – doesn’t give either of them – to do anything further. She steps away, toward the heavy metal door, shivering with her wrath and her wisdom, and neither of them does anything to stop her.

They’re going to bury Peter the next day, at the old Hale house. Lydia does not plan on going.

When she hits the rainy street level and curses after realizing that she forgot an umbrella, she hears her cell phone’s telltale _ping_ from inside her purse and paws around the lipstick and tampons for a second before pulling it out.

_from: STILES_

_need to talk. just you. need you_

* * *

_then unwrap me, hand and foot_

Sheriff Stilinski lets her into the house without the slightest hint of a question, spoken or otherwise. Lydia presumes that, by now, he must be a little used to her showing up there at unusual hours, summoned by inarticulate texts from Stiles or clandestine IMs from Scott telling everyone to meet at Stiles’s place for a How to Vanquish the Impending Evil session.

She doesn’t knock on Stiles’s door; it’s already ajar. When she nudges it silently open, stepping with bare feet onto the carpet, she sees Stiles folded in on himself at the absolute foot of his bed, his forehead hidden by his raised knees, around which pale arms are slung.

“Hey,” she greets him quietly.

He sniffles in response. “I’m losing my mind.”

Lydia sets her purse down and pads across the floor to lower herself tentatively onto the quilt beside him. Once, she’d had a dream that he’d pulled her naked on this bed and licked his name onto her pulse and eaten her out without taking off his shirt, and another time she’d dreamed that they’d just laid there without saying a word, as though unsure of whether they were dead or not.

“Join the club,” she quips weakly. She slides a hand toward his when he braces his palms on the comforter, but all she can bring herself to do is curl her pinkie into his. “It’s what Scott’s boss said, isn’t it? The darkness thing.”

“Maybe,” Stiles croaks. “Or maybe it’s always been there and that was just the… that was the spark.”

If anyone’s the spark here, it’s Stiles, Lydia thinks, but she’s not about to tell him that. It’s dangerous to even _think_ things like that, let alone give voice to them.

“God,” he whines, and when he takes a fist of his hair and tugs on it, it seems to unravel from its spiked-up shape. “I-I don’t know what the hell’s going on anymore; I feel like I’m going crazy.”

Lydia’s breath catches in her throat.

 _There is literally nothing you can say to me that will make you sound crazy_.

Stiles’s lips taste like salt when she kisses them. It’s nothing like the rammed-on mess that had driven itself through her body the month before; he is not choking nor shivering, and air comes out of his nose in even heaves, warming her whole face.

She had not imagined that it would go further. She had imagined the same naïve hope that had possessed her in the sunlit stillness of the locker room, the hope that life was a bedtime story and all bad and broken things could be repaired with kisses. But Stiles’s fingers suddenly jumble into her hair and grip it, and though his mouth is contorting in hers with the sobs he still has not finished, though his body is stooped with uncertainty, he is molding her molten mouth to his as though it is the only thing that is keeping his feet on the ground, fisting her dress into his other hand with a grip that shakes from strength. When she breaks away, when her heart is stuck underneath her tongue and her belly is knotted with heat, he sighs out her name as though caressing it and she’s never heard a sound so reverent, so careful.

Lydia feels too big for her body, too singed for her clothes. She wants to watch Stiles’s fingers, so long and so white, peel the garments off of her and throw them aside, to trace the lines of her palms until they are no longer so scarlet. There is a haze in his eyes as he gazes open-mouthed at her swollen lips, and she doubts she looks much more composed, especially with her hair still woven among his fingers.

“Why’d you do that?” he whispers, heady. A butterfly bats its frantic wings against Lydia’s ribcage.

“I—” _I needed it_. “I thought maybe the… situation called for it.” _I read once_ — “For both of us.” _Touch me._

“Could the situation call for it one more time?” Stiles asks her, looking down so that his thick lashes hide his sanguine eyes. “I mean, if not, that’s cool; I can just—”

Lydia kisses him much more fiercely and insistently now, her teeth making a clicking noise when they knock against his, the tip of her tongue skimming over his lips until his gasp of surprise gives her room to explore his mouth further, careless and wet and urgent. A whimper quavers in his throat as he tumbles backwards, and she follows, her knees rumpling his quilt, her palms slamming flat onto the sheets as she bears over him on all fours.

There is nothing typical or expected about this, she thinks, but it feels so right that she could do it until she no longer knew how. Stiles’s hands snake up to rest at the small of her back, and she grazes her lips against the hollow of his throat, knowing how easy it would be to kill him now if she were a wolf, if she were a hunter, but maybe that is what has made her want to bind herself to Stiles at the skin since the new school year had started: he is so vulnerably human, just like her; so fragile and trusting are they, by nature, and no amount of senseless screams that tear themselves from her in the middle of the night will change this – this frail beating of his frenzied pulse against her tongue.

When he gulps to try to catch his breath, it throbs against her mouth, and she grips the sheets more tightly. Jackson had never let her do this, preferring to flip her over and map her out himself, but Stiles is utterly still and wonderstruck, his eyelids fluttering, his red tongue flicking out to wet his lips. Lydia nuzzles into the side of his flushed neck.

“Holy crap,” he keeps whispering, but there’s something more reverent about it than juvenilely thrilled. “Holy crap. Holy—is this happening? Am I dreaming? Like, honestly, if you’re a dream, Lydia, please tell me. Right now.”

Lydia’s head moves languidly, the tip of her nose running lightly up his ear. He shudders.

“I’m not,” she assures him, in lieu of banter and dismissiveness, and it’s then, only then, that Stiles’s hands slip down to her elbows and he turns his head to meet hers and kisses her himself.

The novice tenderness of Stiles’s kissing is what makes him so good at it. Lydia hasn’t ever _really_ been kissed the way he kisses her, like she’s a puff of smoke he’s waiting to breathe in, like she’s a fountain of sun spray he aches to swallow. She grasps his wrist and guides it to the front of her dress, to the gold buttons, and he breaks off, blinking up at her, a thousand silent questions bounding through his amber eyes.

Lydia rolls her eyes and he takes that as an answer, pinching the lowest button between thumb and forefinger, prodding it out of its hole. Lydia’s skin itches and crawls for need of meeting the moonlight whittling his bedsheets, and as Stiles works his way up, he smiles at her, softly, amicably.

“I cannot believe we’re doing this,” he tells her conversationally, popping open another button. A shiver runs across Lydia’s skin, though from what, she can’t be sure. His bitten-down fingernail absently touches her navel. His jocular front ebbs, and his mouth twitches back down into a line. “So really, Lydia, why _are_ we doing this?”

Lydia bites her lip, her eyes darting down.

“I mean, not that I’m complaining,” he appends hastily, jostling her arm with reassurance. “At all. In even the _vaguest_ sense of the word. It’s just, the, uh… timing’s a little weird, you know?”

“Is it?” Lydia asks him in her airiest tone. Another button comes undone, the second to last, and Stiles’s hand stills, the pads of his fingers coming to rest barely on the skin between her breasts.

“Kinda,” he admits. “I mean, I guess I just, y’know, wanna make _sure_ … that if we’re doing this thing, this thing that’s very – a very big deal – we’re doing it with… one hundred percent clear heads and unbiased forces of will.”

“What would you consider a _bias_ , Stiles?” Lydia inquires, giving him a flat look.

Stiles shrugs, tracing circles onto her skin until goosebumps erupt there, and Lydia clenches the inside of her cheek between her teeth to keep from squirming.

“Recent emotional trauma?” he suggests. “Pre-finals stress? Mercury in retrograde? There are plenty of factors coming into play here; I’m just saying.”

“Okay,” Lydia agrees in a burst. “So maybe if we sit here for ten hours and _dissect_ this, it might not be the most _ideally healthy_ situation, but I think we can both agree that it’s something we both _need_ , and that it’ll be… mutually beneficial, in the long run.”

She raises her head imperiously, gazing down at him with her best victory look. He stares unfalteringly back at her for several seconds, his fingers stilling again, and Lydia’s heart begins to hammer like a rogue drum. Her arms are smarting from holding herself up for so long.

Something shifts in the back of Stiles’s eyes, then, something heavy and absolute like the foundation of a continent, and when his hand moves again, it’s to undo the last button and wander languidly over to her lacy purple bra strap, to linger, to covet.

“Stiles,” she whispers.

“Mmm?” he replies, his eyes now focused hungrily on her pale shoulder.

“Not all of us are lacrosse players,” she tells him, and when he does a double-take to fix her with a few perplexed blinks, she huffs, slumping. “My arms are tired.”

“Oh,” Stiles says, dumbly at first, but then, cottoning on, he pushes himself up slightly by the elbows and repeats, gravely, “ _Oh_.”

He wiggles out from under her and scoots over, patting the space beside him. Frowning, Lydia reclines, stretching her black-stockinged legs out and rolling over, flipping her hair back onto the pillow.

“You could also stand to lose the shirt,” she comments tartly. “Since I’m already practically halfway done here, nudity-wise.”

Stiles’s shirt has been wrestled off and flung aside before Lydia can blink a second time. She nods in a “not bad” sort of way and shifts, her thumbs hooking around the waistband of her tights.

She lifts her right leg up first and bends it back, rolling the nylon off, before switching to the left and steadily snaking the last of the tights down to the toes. Stiles’s eyes rove unflaggingly along her thighs and her calves and Lydia is fairly sure that she sees him pinch himself in the forearm. She folds in a smile.

She sits up, shouldering the now-open dress off until it crumples under her butt. She tugs it out and folds it over her arm, bending over the other side of the bed to set it carefully on the floor. Before she can turn fully toward Stiles again, she has to bite down a breath at the touch of his thumb to her hipbone.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he rasps, heady.

Lydia kisses him instead. His hands run all over her invisibly filthiest parts, and, an hour later, curled against him in the dark, feeling his foot twitch in his sleep, feeling made of stars and wildflowers for the way he holds her when he’s not conscious enough to stop himself, she has never felt more made new.

* * *

_out of the ash_

_i rise._

“Have you death in your blood, banshee?” the demon wolf asks her, oily, prowling. “Have you percolated until you’re empty of your own sins?”

Stiles’s hand grips hers until she’s sure her fingers will break. He’s breathing fast.

“No,” she retorts. “Death bleeds _me_.”


End file.
